Seated Courtier with His Falcon

The Prophet mounted on the Buraq and escorted by angels passing over the Kaʻbah (BL Or.6810, f. 5v). - Herat, 1494-95

Persian miniature from the mid-1500s depicting Mohammed ascending to Paradise astride the miraculous horse Buraq, surrounded by angels. In Islamic lore, this event is called the "Miraj," or the Night Journey. From a miniature made to illustrate a copy of the poems of Nizami, called Nizami's Khamsa (Five Poems). Tabriz, Persia, 1539-43.

the cloth merchant / mid 1700s / reaz abbasi / safavid / iran

This is one of the 12 miniatures illustrating the poem Khusraw and Shirin in the Hermitage's famous Persian manuscript of the Khamsa, an anthology of five poems by the 12th-century poet Nizami, who lived on the territory of present-day Azerbaijan. In 1431 this manuscript of the Khamsa was copied out in Herat by the calligrapher Mahmud for Sultan Shahrukh , son of the legendary Tamerlaine . Khusraw and Shirin is the first poem in the literature of the Near and Middle East in which man'...